Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus

Data Skeptic

• Episode: Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus
• Website: Data Skeptic
• Feed URL: https://dataskeptic.com/api/blog/rss
• Published: 2018-10-05 02:00

In this episode, our guest is Dan Kahan about his research into how people consume and interpret science news. In an era of fake news, motivated reasoning, and alternative facts, important questions need to be asked about how people understand new information. In a paper titled Cultural cognition of scientific consensus, Dan and co-authors Hank Jenkins‐Smith and Donald Braman discuss the "cultural cognition of risk" and establish experimentally that individuals tend to update their beliefs about scientific information through a context of their pre-existing cultural beliefs. In this way, topics such as climate change, nuclear power, and conceal-carry handgun permits often result in people.